French Women Filmmakers • Ciné-Concert

Registration closed but Walk-Ins Welcome!

Ciné-concert : French harpist Isabelle Olivier on Alice Guy’s silent films.

As part of our annual Festival de la Francophonie and of our Cherchez la Femme Film Series we underline International Women’s Day with a ciné-concert celebrating the first French woman filmmaker Alice Guy (1873-1968).

Isabelle Olivier, French harpist and composer, is passionate about exchanges between cultures and generations. In November 2021, during the lockdown, she wrote and performed the live soundtrack to a silent film screening about pioneering women from the world of cinema. In 2023, granted by Villa Albertine in DC, she researched new silent black and white movies, interviewed outstanding people there, and performed at the French Embassy and at the DC Jazz Festival.

On the program:

- The Cabbage Patch Fairy (1896)

- Madame a des envies (1907)

- A fool and his money (1912)

- Matrimony Speed Limit (1913)

- The Birth, the Life, and the Death of Christ (1906)

- The Consequences of Feminism (1906)

With a complimentary glass of Bourgogne Louis Jadot. Enter a chance to win Sofitel’s Le Bar gift certificate at this screening!

Series curated by Nick Davis, Aimée Laberge and Paprika Bonnin-Occansey

* Entrée Libre for students with ID on-site/.edu addresses online. High school, college or university.

About Alice Guy

Alice Ida Antoinette Guy-Blaché (1 July 1873 – 24 March 1968) was a French pioneer film director. She was one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative fiction film, as well as the first woman to direct a film. From 1896 to 1906, she was probably the only female filmmaker in the world. She experimented with Gaumont’s Chronophone sync-sound system, and with color-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects.

About Isabelle Olivier

Throughout her atypical career path as a jazz harpist, composer, and artistic director, Isabelle Olivier has built interdisciplinary bridges between artistic fields while opening herself up to an array of musical styles. Armed with her harp on her journey as artist and human, she has been able to expand her musical horizons to embrace all disciplines and territories.

She composed and recorded twelve albums throughout her thirty-two-year musical career, which has taken her to twenty-five countries, to work on a variety of collaborative and interactive projects. She also had the opportunity to share her musical expertise in the cinema and performing arts fields, as she composed the soundtracks of movies directed by Agnès Varda and Abdellatif Kechiche, and of several plays.

After Olivier became the first composer to win the Villa Le Nôtre – Versailles Prize, The Art Institute in Chicago asked her to write and perform an artistic response to the exhibition “Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist.”

In 2024, she will release her new album ‘Impressions’ with a string quartet, piano, accordion, drums, harp, and electronics.

She is the new CEO and Rewound Echoes, Jazz label and edition company.